Awesome Page Numbering Tricks With OpenOffice Writer

My mainstay word processing application is the freely available OpenOffice Writer. What I wanted to do was the following:

1. Have a perfectly centered title page (instructions), with NO PAGE NUMBER.
2. Have a Table of Contents with NO PAGE NUMBER.
3. Have the third page start the document, showing the page number as 1, counting forward from there, and updated in the Table of Contents.

Sound impossible to do? It’s not. Using the magic of Page Styles, this is easy to do.

To note, this is semi-advanced stuff, but once you get it working it’s great because it looks very professional.

Step 1.

Launch OpenOffice Writer and create a new blank document.

Adjust the zoom slider at the extreme bottom right so that the page is completely in view and only takes up half the area, like this:

 

Click (at top) Format then Styles and Formatting so that the Styles and Formatting box is visible, like this:

Tip: You can quickly access this box by pressing F11 on your keyboard. Pressing once shows it, pressing it again takes it away and vice versa.

Step 2. Create a new custom Page Style

First, click the FOURTH button from the left in the Styles and Formatting box, like this:

Second, click the LAST button on the right and choose New Style from Selection, like this:

 

Put the title as TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS, like this:

I suggest putting it in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS to make it easy to spot. You’ll see why in a moment.

After clicking OK, you’ll see it in your list:

Step 3. Apply the page style

Your document at this point has only 1 page. Double-click TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS to apply the style. It will change from "Default" to the style you double-clicked.

You will know the style is applied by examining the bottom of the page you’re on, like this:

At this point, enter a page break by pressing CTRL+ENTER on your keyboard. The Page Style from page 1 will "carry" to page 2, and looks like this:

Step 4. Create your cover page and table of contents

For instructions on how to make a perfectly centered title page, see this.

Click your mouse on page 2, then click Insert, then Indexes and Tables, then Indexes and Tables again, and from the new window that appears click OK. This will insert a table of contents on page two and looks like this:

Remember that for now the Table of Contents has nothing to index yet.

Step 5. Insert a manual break with a different style and restart page numbering

This is the tricky (but not really) part.

ON PAGE 2, click below the table of contents. You’ll see your flashing cursor there, like this:

Click Insert then Manual Break. Fill it out as follows:

Choose the break as Page Break, the Style as Default, tick the box to Change Page Number and set the page number to 1.

Now you will notice that on page 3, the style listed at the bottom is Default and looks like this:

Step 6. Inserting a footer

Click Insert, then Footer, then Default.

Like this:

 

Notice that your TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS is also present. The reason we do not select that one is because we want the footer only to appear on pages with the Default page style selected.

After doing this you will notice that page 3 now has a footer, but the title and table of contents page does not. This is exactly what we want. It looks like this:

(Note the bottom of page 3 above, you can see the footer there.)

Step 7. Inserting page numbers in the footer.

ON PAGE 3, click inside the footer so the cursor is blinking in there.

Click Insert then Fields then Page Number.

A number will appear, and it will be page 1, just like we wanted.

From here on out, all other pages will follow the number in consecutive order.

Tips

USE HEADER TAGS for chapter and subchapter headings. This what the table of contents will "understand".

In the Styles and Formatting box, click the FIRST icon there, then choose the bottom menu as Text Styles, like this:

When you need to assign a chapter heading, highlight the text and double-click Heading 1. This will make your chapter header. For subchapters, use Header 2, Header 3 and so on.

Also remember that to update your Table of Contents to reflect chapters, pages and so on, simply right click any part of the gray area of the table of contents page and right-click Update Index/Table, like this:

Yes, I know, this is a lot to take in a single sitting – and it will take you a few minutes to get thru all this. But once working, you’ll always do book-style documents like this.